Charles Koppelman, a veteran music executive whose career spanned four decades before he became a top executive at Martha Stewart and Steve Madden’s companies, died Friday at the age of 82. The news was posted on social media his son Brian, showrunner of “Billions,” and daughter Jenny Koppelman Hutt. No official cause of death was given, but Brian wrote, “He spent his last days surrounded by those he loved the most.”
It is no overstatement to say that Koppelman was one of the most formidable industry executives of the past 50 years. Over the course of his decades in the music business, Koppelman worked with everyone from Barbra Streisand and the Lovin’ Spoonful to Prince and Vanilla Ice. He began his career as a singer but quickly became a top-flight publisher, working for Don Kirshner’s Aldon Music, with Clive Davis at CBS Records, and in partnership with longtime Sony/ATV chief Martin Bandier, founded SBK Entertainment, which was sold to EMI in 1989 for $300 million.
After leaving his post at the helm of EMI in 1997, he worked with Steve Madden and Martha Stewart before returning to the music business with his own C.A.K. Entertainment in 2011, where he has scored branding deals for Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony with Kohl’s, Nicki Minaj and Adam Levine with K-Mart, and many others.
Born in Brooklyn in 1940, Koppelman began his career with a group called the Ivy Three (which scored a hit in 1960 with the novelty song “Hey, Yogi”) before being recruited as a songwriter by Kirshner, who oversaw much of the hit factory loosely termed the Brill Building; Kirshner’s offices were actually across the street. Finding his songwriting skills outclassed by associates like Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Ellie Greenwich, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, he moved to the other side of the desk and ran Kirshner’s Aldon Music, which eventually merged with Screen Gems/ Columbia Music and produced a number of early hits for the Monkees and many others.
In 1965, he and Koppelman and former bandmate Don Rubin left Columbia to launch, Koppelman/Rubin Associates, which signed a Greenwich Village rock act called the Lovin Spoonful, led by a young singer-songwriter named John Sebastian, the same year. The group was an almost instantaneous hit in the psychedelic era, with hits like “Daydream,” “Summer in the City” and “Do You Believe in Magic?” Three years later, he and Rubin sold their company to Commonwealth United films, which retained them as top executive.
More to come…